Friday, March 30, 2012

Bookbinding 101: Needles

We use two kinds of needles, straight and curved (we'll teach you how to make your own curved later in this post). Which one we use depends on the book structure we're working on. Curved needles work very well when sewing a coptic stitch, while a straight needle works great on a long stitch. You can make either book with either kind of needle, but we find it much easier using curved for coptic, which we find also allows for the binding to be tighter, and we find it less awkward to use straight needles on something like a longstitch.The curve allows you to "hook" around as you are sewing. The photo at right should get the idea across.

Curved needles are pricier in the U.S. than are straight needles, at least as far as we've found. However, for those in the U.K., Shepherds Falkiners sells straight and curved for the same price. Not sure what the sizing numbers mean over at Shepherds, but in the U.S. we use the darning #1, which we use for sewing 3-ply (3 cord) linen thread and as thick as 6-ply. In the U.S., both straight and curved needles are available at Hollanders and Talas.

You can also make your own curved needles out of straight ones. How to do this is explained after the jump.

To make your own curved needles, you just need a candle, and two needle nose pliers.

Holding the needle with pliers on both ends, bend it ever so slightly as the needle starts to heat up. It only takes a few seconds.

An angle that is slightly larger than 90 degrees works well. Remember that the needle will be hot, so place it on a heat-resistant surface to cool down once you've bent it to the angle you'd like.

The needle will have soot on it so remember to clean it off with soap and water before using it to sew your nice clean pages.

A little trick to help in pulling the needle and thread through a tight hole is to grab the needle with a balloon. We keep a bag of water balloons on hand for just that purpose. That's unfilled water balloons, in case you were wondering (you never know). You may also find it useful to use a pair of small needle nose to pull the needle through.

2 comments:

Thanks for this! I used this method to make myself a great batch of curved needles - I have 12 now, good for multi-needle coptic bindings! I also have some larger ready-made curved repair needles, which are good for a single needle binding. They're quite a bit thicker than my home-made ones, which I made with my preferred binding needles - quilter's basting needles. I keep a good stock of these and use the straight ones too. You're right though, that it is sooo much easier to bind coptic stitch with curved needles - I wouldn't have believed it, until I tried! I found several useful tools at the local quilting shop; besides my needles, I bought a great measuring square, some quilters' spacing bars - great for making even spaces between book boards - also some "needle grabbers", which are just rubbery, textured discs, that work in much the same way as your balloons - very comfortable to use and also handy when the lid of my glue bottle refuses to undo! Thanks for another great post!

Welcome

Here we explore book arts through our bookbinding 101 series and tutorials, and occasionally share other odds and ends. We are Daniel and Karleigh and we make books and other things while living in rural America with our two young sons.

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We are done teaching for the 2013 year and are currently setting up workshops for 2014! If you'd like us to come teach in your area, please send an email to KarleighJae@gmail.com